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OUI AND THE FRENCH

27-03-2008

French President Sarkozy and his glamorous ex-model wife Carla Bruni are wooing Britain on their current State visit – but while it’s nice to have a leader from across the channel paying us compliments, there’s really no need. Outside of the tabloids, the days of Frog-hating Brits are long gone.

Whenever Anglo-French relations are to the fore, red-top editors invoke ancient memories of Agincourt, and General de Gaulle’s more recent refusal to allow Britain to join the Common Market.

Yet regardless of the history, most British people in 2008 see our Gallic cousins as providing our handiest ski resorts and the nearest quality vineyards. Paris is a capital of cosmopolitan beauty, and far more welcoming than popular myth would allow.

Even in my youth, the French could be cheerily dismissed a smelly garlic munchers; now that garlic is a staple condiment of the British household it’s a jibe that has lost its force.

We may have fought bitterly in previous centuries, but Britain could no more conceive of going to war with these people than we would the United States.

The truth is that, as so often, politicians are followers rather than leaders of the people.